If you're worried that attraction for reasons we create is arbitrary and therefore meaningless:

We created the rules of chess. And of all sports and games. But they are not a waste of time, nor meaningless.

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Please don't waste your time trying to talk me out of my atheism. You won't do it. Believe me, I've heard all the arguments before.

I've always felt that it was rude and presumptuous for someone to try to convert someone else who has strong convictions unless they ask for help and guidance. (And I definitely do not want any.)

ummm, lessee. he says his atheism is immune to criticsm. he claims to know all arguments that exist against atheism.

is it presumptuous to criticise someone with strong convictions? more like the reverse. it's presumptuous to think you're so perfect that no one has any useful criticism of you.

I do understand that he gets lots of mail and it makes sense to try and get less mail on a subject where the mail tends to be really bad. But why doesn't he write, "If I don't know you, please don't send me email about atheism. I won't read it because I'm busy with other stuff."? Instead he goes off saying all sorts of crap and never even mentions this. In fact, this defense of his position may not be true. Maybe he skims all his email and doesn't mind the time -- enjoys doing it. We don't know.

Den Beste asks If I suffer amnesia, did I die?

This is a question of the form: if word 1, then does that mean word 2?

This is semantics.

I can divine what issues he's confused about from this question. But from almost everyone he'd get much better quality responses if he managed not to ask about semantics. Because a respondent needs to be |337 (elite) enough to totally ignore his explicit question (and probably explain why when Den Beste tries to insist on discussing semantics).

The issue he's actually interested in is what is important about a person. The answer is his worldview. Amnesia thus destroys the person if it's permanent. If it's potentially temporary, then the information is still there, and we could say the worldview is in stasis or something like that.

Notice i didn't mention death. Because death is strongly associated with bodies. It'd be standard to say someone who had amnesia did not die. What happened to him? Amnesia, which is equivalent to destruction of what's important about him, but not his body. Notice how this paragraph is really boring and pretty damn useless WRT his question. That's b/c it talks about semantics.

PS I criticise Den Beste in particular not because it's the dumbest thing I ran into lately. Rather, because his blog is one of the best. So the ideas ought to be more interesting to people with |337 worldviews than if I pointed out, again, why headlines like "Israel Puts An Explosive Stop To Peace By Blowing People Up" are wicked. You can always go read LGF anyway.

this is a draft i wrote a few hours ago. if i were to write it again, i'd change lots of stuff. i consider it flawed. however, i think most of the improvements i'd make wouldn't really make the ideas much more interesting. i'll get more right next time. *shrug*

Christians generally don't argue very well explicitly. From all their "scientific" evidence against evolution, to resorting to defending the existence of God by appeal to faith. From thinking that beatings can teach people, and often thus not being interested in coming up with arguments to use on that set of people who should be beaten, to appealing to the authority of priests, God, or holy books. From "you can't prove God doesn't exist" to "we hold these truths *self-evident*". (If you think any of these are done by, say, less than 20% of US Christians, lemme know.)

However, despite all this, these people have a lot of good, true ideas to offer, especially with regard to morality. The Christian tradition has 2,000 years of monotheism ("One God from Whom comes morality" they might say. But the key is they believe there exists is only one morality for all people.)

Now, combine good, valuable ideas with bad arguing. Who learns these ideas from them? Only people who want to. And it's not a matter of just deciding you'd like to know what they do, and reading a few books. The only known way to reliably learn these things is to identify with the tradition, and to honestly enjoy it. And then, one day, after sufficient interaction, most of their claims that they treat as manifest truth, will *feel* true to you, even though they were never *argued* persuasively to you.

Anyone who did this, who really cared about the Christian tradition, would not want to identify themselves as an atheist. (This is why it's hard to find many people who call themselves atheists in the US.) People who do call themselves atheists either oppose the Christian tradition (learned and then rejected the stuff), or are ignorant of it.

And that's why atheists are frowned on so much. Wicked or ignorant, take your pick.

You can read Samizdata and USS Clueless until your eyes fall out, but the moral content won't be there. Do they *ever* assert that we are the good guys, or that certain people are the bad guys? Nah, that's simplisme. On the other hand, if you read IMAO or Scrappleface or The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, you will find moral claims (albeit unargued) all over the place. And for members of the tradition, who understand why these claims are considered true, that the arguments aren't repeated everytime simply doesn't matter.

Take two IMAO fans. They are right-wing, hate commies, etc

One is a former socialist, the other was raised right-wing. Who understands socialism better? Probably the former socialist. He's also more likly to have commie sympathies, but that's another issue.

The point is being a former-X generally means having a pretty good understanding of X. Because actually being X usually means understanding it well.

Now, imagine someone who was a former everything. Every important tradition, he's either a former or current member.

this is amusing. It states you must be 18 to use their service, and also states they do not discriminate on the basis of age.

Alcohol cannot have complex effects on human personalities. Just the same as banging your head. Why? Well, the alcohol we drink is one fairly simple molecule. It doesn't have information about human personalities, and thus couldn't target parts of one. And it's not evolved in that regard (no selection pressure).

But couldn't it just happen to be the right thing to have one specific effect?

Well, first off, now you're explaining things by "maybe the world just happens, by luck, to be just the way I thought it was."

And secondly, if it only takes something as simple as alcohol (the molecule isn't many thousands of atoms, just a few) to make people more liable to cheat on their girlfriends, then why haven't we yet designed a chemical to make people act more chaste?

Thirdly, people are very different, and store information in their brains differently. They vary so much as to confuse scientists, so what are the chances a plant happened to grow in a way to work on everyone (including past people, even).

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Genes also lack the information to complexly effect one's personality.

Genes also never got a chance to evolve this ability, because once people had personalities and there were selection pressures on them, memes, which evolve much faster, would always do it first thus removing the selection pressure.

And again, it would be quite a huge feat of luck for some gene to just happen to have the right qualities to effect the personalities of many different people.

ok so disney wouldn't distribute moore's movie. said it was un-patriotic. didn't want it.

now it makes money. the lefty news seems to think disney is now mad about missing out on the cash. *ahem*

but it gets worse. they allege the movie is being censored (via an R rating) by angry disney stock owners. who, they implied, were mad for financial reasons.

in other words, the LEFT is so hell-bent on looking at things through the lens of money, that when people do something on principle, they can't see it. and say incoherent things (getting the unfair rating would have had to happen b4 the film made any money.... makes much more sense they censored it b/c they don't like it) when they explanation the right did something bad on principle works so much better (still bad, but much better).

insurance is the exact opposite of gambling, and vice versa

most people think the primary thing about gambling is that overall the casino takes a little of your money. this is true, but not primary.

insurance companies also take a little of your money. but that's ok. insurance is great anyway. most services charge you, so we can't judge gambling that simply.

what insurance does is take a little money from you most of the time (in most universes), but give you a bunch now and then (in a few universes) when (where) you need it most b/c disaster struck. this is great, because it allows you to have a higher minimum quality of life, which is worth the fee, and worth somewhat lowering your max quality of life.

gambling, on the other hand, takes money from you most of the time (in most universes), and gives a large pay out rarely (in a few universes). the basic effect is to make most of your life worse (most universes), but create a few spikes of huge wealth (in a few universes). this is the exact opposite effect that insurance had. this raises the maximum qualify of life you may experience, but at a cost to the minimum.

BTW this mostly applies to gambling that's either high-stakes that you only do a couple times, or to stuff with a very low chance of payout (lottery, maybe slots too, not sure). if you were placing lots of small bets at 49% odds, the effect of gambling would be very minimal, as your luck would almost always average out even within a single gambling session. (so all you'd really be doing is paying the fee to not do much of anything)

I previously wrote: lefties think the reason that capitalism creates wealth is that people are inherently greedy (which is why in socialism (aka 100% taxes) people wouldn't all want to do their share). this is how they get the idea that socialism is the right idea, but we need a little bit of capitalism to better make stuff. (ie, to better harness people's greed)

To add to that, it's no wonder many lefties think this when right-wingers still think it too!

A friend told me this realisation, that many pro-capitalism folks concede socialism's moral case, and argue on pragmatic grounds, is why Ayn Rand became a writer (to make said moral case for capitalism). Kinda makes me wanna read her.

Under socialism, aka a Command Economy, people don't control what they make. Rather, it's taken from them, and given to a few leaders for redistribution. Everyone is then given wealth as the leaders deem fit. The moral case against this goes something like: MY FUCKING GOD, WHO WOULD WANT TO GIVE ALL HIS STUFF AWAY AND LET SOMEONE ELSE RULE HIS LIFE?

Under capitalism, aka Let It Be economics, when you make something, you own it, to do with as you see fit. Whatever you create is yours, whatever someone else creates is not yours. Thus everyone is respected as individuals competent to make their own decisions with their stuff. There are no rulers. The moral case for this goes something like: D00D, YOU GET TO BE FREE!

taco bell has a sign on the wall saying if ur unhappy about ur service, or don't love the food, you can have a refund or replacement, your call.

borders let someone return a book with no receipt two years after purchase.

why does this not happen w/ a command economy? under capitalism, making customers happy helps win business from competitors. under a command economy, there are no competitors, so there's no reason to do it. and also, it's wealth redistribution (those who ask for more, get more) by some method other than the commander's Grand Plan, so philosophically an anathema to socialists.